Strong storms cut power to thousands in the Kansas City area Saturday night, including the Kansas City Pet Project's animal shelter. That left volunteers having to care for dozens of frightened animals in the dark. The electricity was restored sho Allison LongThe Kansas City Star

Strong storms cut power to thousands in the Kansas City area Saturday night, including the Kansas City Pet Project's animal shelter. That left volunteers having to care for dozens of frightened animals in the dark. The electricity was restored sho Allison LongThe Kansas City Star

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“We do lose power quite a bit,” she said. “Unfortunately with the facility we are in now, there’s no alternative power source. We can’t get a generator to power that building.”

Close to 200 animals were being cared for at the shelter on Sunday.

The shelter’s building at 4400 Raytown Road is not equipped to use a generator. KC Pet Project has small generators that can be set up in the vet clinic as backup.

So when power goes out, shelter staff members try to notify Kansas City Power & Light as quickly as possible, and they use headlamps and flashlights to care for the animals.

“It gets so dark in the kennel area and the hallways that you can’t see anything,” Fugate said. “All of our staff wear headlamps while they are caring for the dogs.”

The staff proceeds with everything as if there were power — dogs are gotten out, fed and watered.

“Our clinic goes into backup mode,” Fugate said. “Any surgeries we have planned, we still try to do, but they have headlamps as well in there.”

Those areas also have more natural light. The staff also tries to get air circulating through the building by opening windows.

Most of the outages last only a few hours. One time in June 2014, however, power was out for more than 24 hours. That outage came the day after the shelter received about 100 cats from a hoarding case.

The KC Pet Project hopes that the new animal shelter that is to be built in Swope Park will be designed with a backup generator so it doesn’t lose power as often.

The new shelter will be part of the $800 million infrastructure program that voters authorized in April. It is expected to handle power outages better.